There is a critical shortage of research-oriented pediatric neurologists. The goal of our Neurological Sciences Academic Development Award (NSADA) is to help to address this shortage by training a new generation of pediatric neurologists equipped to carry out independent, innovative clinical and laboratory- based research centered on neurological diseases of childhood. Our program draws substance from recent progress in genomics, developmental biology, stem cell biology, and cellular, systems, and behavioral neurobiology, which open new avenues for research in the epilepsies, muscular dystrophies, and other prevalent neurological diseases of childhood. Our program will support one pediatric neurology research trainee per year for up to 3 years. Our training faculty includes 25 scientific mentors from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (U of P). Each of these mentors has both an active research program in an area highly relevant to pediatric neurology, and a strong record of training clinician/investigators. The research opportunities we provide fall into two broad areas in which CHOP and the U of P have particular strengths: Epilepsy and Neuromuscular research.